The Secretary for Education has cancelled Gloriavale Christian School’s registration as a private school, acting on an Education Review Office report that found the school still cannot show it is a physically and emotionally safe place for the 84 children on its roll.
The decision was confirmed on Thursday, the same day ERO published the special review report behind it. The school at Haupiri on the West Coast is still open, because its board took an earlier cancellation decision to the High Court, and a judicial review hearing is set down for three days in October. The Ministry of Education has now asked the court to clear those interim orders out of the way.
What makes this report unusual is that it is, in most respects, the best result Gloriavale’s school has had in years. ERO assessed it against the eight criteria for private school registration set out in Schedule 7 of the Education and Training Act 2020, and found it met seven of them, covering premises, tuition, staffing, equipment, curriculum, tuition standards and fit and proper managers. Attendance was running at about 93 percent for Term 1, and classroom observations found settled rooms, positive relationships and structured literacy and mathematics programmes actually being taught.
The eighth criterion is the one that decides everything, and the school failed it. A school must be a physically and emotionally safe place for students, and ERO recorded that criterion as not meeting.
The reasons are specific. “Inconsistencies between the school and community child protection policies limit assurance that governance oversight is effective and that the school is consistently a physically and emotionally safe place for students,” the report said. Staffing decisions were still being made without enough information reaching the board, which meant the board “cannot ensure all reasonable steps have been taken to review and respond to physical and emotional risk for students”.
Reviewers were also blocked. “Information was withheld from ERO in relation to provision, monitoring and reporting requirements for health and safety to and by the premises owners,” the report said. Its conclusion on that criterion was blunt. “ERO is not confident that systems are operating effectively to identify, manage, and monitor risk over time or that reasonable steps have been taken.”
Then there is the finding that restrictions placed on individual staff were not being honoured. “Staff members subject to role restrictions have continued to operate in restricted areas,” the report said. “Evidence gathered onsite indicates that one staff member continued to participate in board meetings, despite a requirement that they not do so.” The Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand is investigating two allegations of staff misconduct, and the school gave ERO the letter of suspension for one staff member.
ERO also noted a habit that will be familiar to anyone who has followed the school’s regulatory history. “There is a pattern of providing new or modified information to demonstrate compliance with private school regulation post ERO’s onsite review process with the school,” the report said. Several of the improvements it recorded arrived only after reviewers had left the site.
The review was requested in April 2026 and the onsite phase completed in May. The report is signed by ERO director of schools Sharon Kelly and dated 21 July 2026. Its overall verdict was that “some improvement is evident” but that “these improvements are partial and, in key areas, not yet sustained”.
One detail in the report is easy to skim past. Gloriavale Christian School is registered to teach students from Year 1 to Year 15, but it is only teaching to Year 8, and board documentation confirmed to ERO that it does not intend to offer anything beyond Year 8 this year. ERO said it was not confident the staffing criterion would keep being met if the school ever returned to teaching Year 9 and above.
Education Services deputy secretary Geoff Short set out the ministry’s position on Thursday. “The secretary for education has decided to cancel Gloriavale Christian School’s registration as a private school after considering findings from a special review by the Education Review Office,” he told RNZ.
“The school currently has around 80 students enrolled and the ministry will work with the school community to determine the most practical timing for the school’s closure, with students’ best interests guiding those discussions,” Short said. He confirmed the ministry had applied to the court “to lift interim orders relating to the secretary for education’s December 2025 decision to cancel the school’s registration as a private school to enable this latest decision to be implemented”, and said affected families were being told directly.
Education Minister Erica Stanford said she trusted the process. “The secretary for education clearly has concerns, as do the Education Review Office, into the quality of the education that’s being provided and the situation those children are in,” she said. “I have absolute and utter confidence in Ellen MacGregor-Reid as the secretary for education to have made the right decision.”
Gloriavale Leavers Support Trust manager Liz Gregory told RNZ’s Checkpoint she thought the school would always struggle with the safety test. “Just with the history of Gloriavale, just the way it has operated and the coercive controlling nature. Basically I think the past has caught up with their present,” she said. Gregory expected the community to keep fighting, and said enrolling children at a mainstream school would be a last resort for it. “It does look like a school closure will go ahead, what the final schooling options look like for the students there, that’s yet to be seen.”
The school board’s response was short. “The school strongly disagrees with the ministry’s decision and is currently considering its options to challenge it. Given that the matter is ongoing, we will not be making any further comment at this time,” it said in a statement. In December, when the secretary first moved to cancel registration, the board said it was “deeply disappointed” and that the decision was “unjust”.
This is the third round of review activity in under two years, following a November 2024 visit and a July 2025 special review. In August 2025 the then Children’s Commissioner, Claire Achmad, publicly called for the school to be closed urgently, 1News reported, saying she had no confidence students were safe. Ministry letters released to RNZ under the Official Information Act in May set out concerns that most teenagers were prevented from progressing beyond Year 11, that young victims and abusers lacked support, and that students could not use the school toilets without fear.
Home schooling is not an obvious escape hatch either. A separate ERO special review of home schooling by Gloriavale families concluded they were not meeting the legal requirements, finding children living and learning in overcrowded hostels that could be unsafe, with some struggling to write. In June the ministry said two surplus classrooms had been shifted to Awahono School at Ahaura, partly so they could take Gloriavale children if families chose to enrol them.
ERO made three recommendations to the board, covering curriculum design, safeguarding and governance assurance, and a board approved school improvement plan. Whether the board gets the chance to act on them now rests with the High Court in October.
What do you think should happen to the children at Gloriavale if the school closes? Leave a comment below and tell us your view.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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